Ask a Veteran for a Personal Perspective on War

Personal reflections are permanent. Episodes in history books are often dry and impersonal by comparison. So it is with our fascination about wars. As years pass, they seem so glamorous, filled with bravado and selfless courage and miraculous campaign strategy.
Hollywood has turned wars into love stories, bravery tales, and everything in between. How different a story we hear when we get some first-hand accounts of those bloody battles.
On Tuesday, Veterans Day will be observed. Notice I do not write, “celebrated,” since Veterans Day is hardly anything about which to make merry. We are talking about lives and bodies, many of which went away whole and returned shattered. That’s not something to celebrate.
In the time I’ve walked this earth, it’s been my privilege to have known and spoken to many veterans including those from World Wars I and II, Korea, Grenada, Vietnam (been there, done that) and the desert wars.
I never met a Civil War veteran, but heard of one from my father, whose uncle left Germany to escape a war there only to get caught in the War Between the States on the Union side. Gosh, I wish I could have met him.
To read about war, to conjure an idea what it must have been like is one thing, but to hear tales from a veteran who was there is the difference between being at a raging structure fire and seeing it in a video.
My grandmother would speak of Armistice Day as if it happened only yesterday. She would say about how awful it was, that war, and how joyous everyone was when it ended. She always kept silent for a minute on Nov. 11 at 11 a.m., when the armistice was signed in Europe.
In the old neighborhood, across the street from our house, lived two veterans of that war. After a few beers, it seemed, their aging minds would blossom, and they would retell parts of the War to End All Wars or the Great War.
One brought home some seeds of poppies from Flanders Field, and would tell about the rows of war dead buried there. Then, he would go silent.
Another man would tell of the terror that mustard gas had for him. Even after 50 years or so, he was still scarred from the effects of that poison gas.
I could scarcely imagine the enormity of that war, or the impact it had on those who fought. We studied in history class of the carnage at Verdun, 700,000 casualties in the longest battle of any war. It began Feb. 21, 1916 and did not end until Dec. 19 of that year. The true impact evaded me then, it still does.
Thanks to the profession of journalism, I have had the distinct honor to meet men who fought in World War II, fought in Sicily, flew missions over Germany, were imprisoned in prisoner of war camps, served on battleships, were in the Batan Death march, and survived, and others who brought faces to the Battle of the Bulge.
The local group of Bulge vets realized that young people would never fully understand the horrors of that, or any war, unless they heard it from men who were there.
That group, whose members shrink with the passage of years, have gone to local schools to tell of bone-biting cold, what it was like to sleep under a truck or in the snow, to hear enemy bullets within inches of their head.
That band of brothers has an annual gathering, which I addressed several years ago. During that gathering those vets, some spry, others a bit less so, unite in song to the sound of a harmonica, especially “Lily of the Lamplight:”
“Underneath the lantern,
By the barrack gate,
Darling, I remember
The way you used to wait.
’Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me,
You’d always be,
My Lily of the Lamplight,
My own Lily Marlene…”
Some of the old gents had tears in their eyes as they crooned, so we can understand that the passage of time, while it may heal, never erases some memories.
I’ve worked with a veteran of the Korean War. He felt as underappreciated as did others who waded through the rice paddies of Vietnam, or rode machine gun in a helicopter over them.
The Korean War vet recalled terrible cold of the winter he spent in that war-torn nation. “That’s why they called it “frozen Chosan,” he would say.
There is cold, and then there is the cold of a night in a war zone when fear of death fills the heart. Thoughts of home and loved ones are the only things that may bring a glimmer of warmth to the heart, yet the body remains icy. Today’s children will — hopefully — never have to experience that sensory assault.
As earlier veterans found themselves alone with their memories and emotions, so do those who served in Vietnam find themselves. The graying generation is left to wonder what happened to the time between that entry into service, the war, and life after the war.
Iraq, and its cluster of desert towns, is the place where many of today’s young men and women serve, and where many have fallen.
From members of our own National Guard unit, we have learned a little about the searing heat of the desert as well as the cold after the sun sets. We learned how they never put on their boots without first shaking them, to ensure no scorpions or other biting creatures await a human foot.
Revered as heroes, they will return, some day, to civilian life. A younger generation will look to them as teachers, physicians, engineers and clergy.
Each year, on Nov. 11, we may gather to hear speeches about sacrifice and valor and patriotism. Few ceremonies will pass without a prayer being offered that no future legion of Americans will be called upon to fight overseas.
Some vets will talk about their service while others will refuse the opportunity.
Each has a story to tell about a different war from a different vantage point. If you have the opportunity, and the vet is willing, avail yourself of the opportunity to explore history on a first-hand basis.
If enough young people knew of war’s real cost, and if congressmen were sent to fight, my bet is that all wars would cease. Just what would we do with peace?